


Grimm

by gabigail



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:31:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabigail/pseuds/gabigail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose attempts to communicate with the Horrorterrors in an effort to get information. Things go horribly wrong, and Kanaya is powerless to stop the events that transpire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grimm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhe/gifts).



“You don’t need to do this, you know. There are other ways we can go about getting information,” Kanaya pleaded anxiously.

“Kanaya, please calm down. I’ll be just fine.” Rose placed a gentle hand on Kanaya’s shoulder and smiled reassuringly.

“I’m still afraid for you. I’m still frightened of what may happen.” Her lip trembled as she wrung her hands. “Please.”

“Calm down, and please, get ahold of yourself. I’ve made up my mind, and your worrying is only making me nervous. I’m sure that whatever transpires, you’ll be here to make sure I’m alright.”

Kanaya let out a muffled cry, and wrapped her arms around Rose’s torso, gripping the girl to her chest tightly.

“Why must you be so stubborn?!” Rose peeled Kanaya off of herself with as much dignity as she could muster.

_Alright, Rose. Don’t fuck this up._ She let her eyes fall shut, and raised both hands to her temples. She breathed deeply, inwards. Tentatively, not louder than a whisper, she began to speak. Not words in a tongue native to her, no; rather, words of theirs. She spoke in the broodfester tongues of the Horrorterrors. The dark gods of the Furthest Ring. The creatures of nightmares. It’d been some time since she had last tried to commune with them.

Though, it hadn’t been nearly long enough, for their horrid whispers still haunted her dreams. It wasn’t rare for her to awake in the middle of the night, sobbing due to the horrible memories they forced her to recall. Wicked and terrible beings, they were. They disgusted her, and now she was going to go back to them. Try to speak with them in an attempt to get information. Play right into their clutches once again.

She knew she would need to confront them, soon enough. They weren’t things that were easily forgotten. No, it’s the horrible things that stay with you. Always. They stay with you until the day you die, and in her case, long after that as well. The words flowed from her lips naturally, as if she had never forgotten them. As if yesterday had been the day her mother died. They were smooth, like melted glass. It was absolutely beautiful, in the most terrifying way. It was as if she were speaking a poem.

She stopped. Her hands fell, and her head lolled. She went entirely limp, like a ragdoll. She fell, crumpling to the ground. She was a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. Innocent. Helpless. Tragic, so very tragic.

Kanaya dashed to Rose, falling to her knees beside her.

“Rose? Rose! Rose, are you alright?!”

She shook her frantically, but to no avail. She had fallen unconscious. The same dazed, peaceful expression remained on her face.

“Rose! Rose!” Kanaya lifted Rose’s head from the floor, cradling it in her arms gently. She raised two fingers to the side of her neck, her nails just grazing Rose’s skin. This is what Kanaya had been instructed to do in the event of a disaster: check Rose’s pulse.

_Oh god oh god she better be okay._ But Rose’s skin was warm to the touch, and Kanaya could feel the steady beat of Rose’s pulse beneath her fingers. She released a heavy sigh, full of relief, and let her body detense. She was alive. Her Rose was still alive. After all, attempting to commune with the horrorterrors in an attempt to help her friends could be seen as heroic, right? Kanaya certainly thought so.

If Rose died, it was likely that she wouldn’t return. What would Kanaya do without her? She’d already lost so much to the game: her lusus, her home, her friends, even the matriorb she was responsible for, the only thing that could help to repopulate her race. She had already accepted this, deeming it a simple fact of her life now. It was what she was. The game had been responsible for her meeting Rose, after all. She wouldn’t let Rose be taken from her. She simply couldn’t. She didn’t dare think of her life without Rose in it. There was no way she’d be able to go on.

A pained expression played across Rose’s facial features, as if she was recalling a traumatic experience. What was she recalling? Her mother’s death?

Rose let out a horrible scream. It ripped from her lips with the sound of fabric being torn. It was a scream that could shatter the stars and make them fall from the sky, distressed, absolutely terrified. It pierced Kanaya’s very soul. It was terrible, and cruel. **What were they doing to her?**

_Someone make it stop. Someone, please, make it stop. **Make. It. Stop.**_

Kanaya let herself fall to the ground, dropping Rose’s head to the floor. She curled inwards, pressing her knees to her chest. She clutched at her temples. The tears began to prickle at the corners of her eyes. She blinked, squeezing her eyes shut as they fell.

Gradually, Rose’s screams began to fade, to lose their volume and power, and turned to weak sobs of anguish. Sobs of terror and loneliness. Kanaya, unable to help her, unable to even help herself, sat helplessly at Rose’s side, gripping her face in her hands. Her thoughts were a river, a stream of miniscule worries and trivial fears.

_She’s dead... the Horrorterrors are torturing her...killing her slowly...I’m sure of it. But what am I to do? When faced with problems of a monster-ish sort, I usually just take out my makeupkind and start slashing. What’s to slash at? It’s all taking place in her mind._

The sobbing stopped, just as swiftly as the screaming had begun. Kanaya felt slightly better, just slightly. Rose’s body began to radiate a grey aura, an aura of darkness. Tendrils of shadows swirled around her, tentaclesque in movement. It was just the same as it had been when Rose was grimdark, though Kanaya didn’t know that.

Rose’s eyes opened, yet... they weren’t her eyes. They were of a pale white, and were empty. They seemed to almost... glow.

“Rose?” Kanaya questioned her, extremely puzzled. She hadn’t yet witnessed Rose in her grimdark state, and therefore didn’t quite understand what was happening.

Rose rose slowly, first sitting up, then pushing herself to a standing position, using her hands to come to her feet.

“Rose? Can you hear me?”

Rose didn’t respond, and moved forward like an automaton, taking a few steps away from Kanaya.

“Rose?!”

Still paying Kanaya no mind, Rose drew her needlewands from her Strife Specibus, her Thorns of Oglogoth. It’d been awhile since this particular pair of needles had seen the light of day. She knew she should have tossed them away long ago, but for some reason, she felt compelled to keep them, as if she would need them again one day. That day is today.

She raised a hand, loosely ripping the needle. She pointed it toward a bookcase leaning against a wall opposite her.

**“Rose!”** Kanaya was nearly shrieking now, attempting to stop Rose from doing what is inevitable. **“Rose, you can’t!” **  
****

Kanaya stood, rushing to Rose’s side. She tried to force her to lower her arm, to put down the wand. It was of no use, for in this state, Rose was unbelievably strong.

She muttered an incoherent word under her breath. A beam of violet lights flew and hit the bookcase, which then exploded, erupting into flames. Burning pieces of paper scattered about the room, floating gently to the ground. Rose lowered her arm, spun on her heels, and walked away from the bookcase. Her face was blank, her eyes unmoving and her lips turned downwards in a sort of apathetic frown. She was clearly being controlled.

She now directed her dark magic toward the table that was in the middle of the room. The table was made of wood, and was quite ornate, its legs engraved with elaborate swirled designs. More importantly, the table was covered with research notes. It was absolutely littered with papers and books containing careful notations and complicated theorizations. It was all Rose and Kanaya had done for close to three years.

It was gone, engulfed in flames within seconds. Kanaya watched it burn with a forlorn expression written upon her face. All of their hard work... how could Rose do such a thing?

_Except it isn’t actually Rose,_ Kanaya reminded herself. _It’s simply the horrorterrors, acting through Rose. They’ve possessed her body._  
 _Rose took a step in the general direction of the transportalizer._

“Oh, no you don’t!” Kanaya stood in front of the girl, blocking her path. Rose merely walked around Kanaya, muttering under her breath in an irritated tone, though it was still in the tongue of the Horrorterrors so Kanaya didn’t understand what she was actually saying.

Rose stepped on the white marble plate of the transportalizer, vanishing without a trace.

“Damnit.” There was absolutely no way for Kanaya to tell where Rose had gone. She decided to check the most populated room first, the computer lab. She stepped onto the transportalizer as Rose had done seconds before. She concentrated intently, using all of her mental capacity to visualize the place where she wished to end up. Arriving at the computer lab, she quickly observed that Rose wasn’t there, though everyone else was. Karkat and Terezi sat arguing in a corner, and Dave was typing something at a computer, just some more “sick rhymes”, for sure. Gamzee was absent, though this didn’t surprise her in the slightest. It was a relief, if anything.  
Kanaya disappeared just as swiftly as she had come, for she didn’t have time for idle chit chat.

Meanwhile, Rose stood silently in a dimly lit bedroom. The only sound was of her breathing, the glow of her needlewands giving off the only light. She waited for what she guessed to be five minutes. Just stood there, doing nothing, saying nothing, hardly thinking anything at all. She counted down the minutes and seconds in her head, before stepping onto the transportalizer once again.  
This time, she appeared in the computer lab, just as Kanaya had. Kanaya, however, wasn’t there. Kanaya had just left, gone to search for Rose elsewhere. She grinned deviously.

_It worked, I’ve tricked her. Now, to kill them all._

She lifted her hand once again, pointing her wand directly at Karkat, the oh-so wonderful leader of theirs. She scoffed. He was powerless to stop her.

By now, the chatter in the room had died down. Karkat and Terezi had stopped arguing, and Terezi had wound a protective arm around Karkat’s shoulder. Dave had stopped typing in favor of gaping at her wordlessly.  
“Sis, have you gone insane? Have you finally fucking lost it?” Dave questioned, attempting to be somewhat serious, and failing. Rose just chuckled darkly in response.

Back on the other side of the meteor, in a bedroom that had previously belonged to Tavros, Kanaya made a horrible realization. I’ve checked everywhere. She has to be in the- oh god. Oh god, she didn’t. She hasn’t. **She can’t be.**  Kanaya practically jumped onto the transportalizer. **To the computer lab. Take me to the computer lab. Please, it’s all I ask of you.**

Kanaya’s wish was, not so miraculously, granted, and she appeared in her chosen destination, moments later. She took in the scene before her. Rose was standing before the remaining residents of the meteor, pointing a weapon at the leader among them. She knew what was to happen, and she knew she was powerless to stop it.

_Unless... **No**. She couldn’t do that. She could never do that. **But she had to, she knew she did.**_ As much as she wished for it to be untrue, for her to have another method of escape, she knew deep in her heart where her duty lied. She knew what she had to do.  
Regretfully, remorsefully, Kanaya drew her makeupkind. She revved her chainsaw, raising it above her head. Rose turned her head not a second later, but it was already too late for her.

_Cherry-red blood splattered the floor tiles. Kanaya fell to her knees, unable to go on. Far, far away, a clock chimed in the home of an... exceedingly excellent host._

_“Oh dear, it seems that time has run out... for the seer and the sylph.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry it was so short, and that it had such a sad ending! I don't think it's what you were expecting, but once I got this idea for the ending in my head, I couldn't bring myself to write anything else. Regardless of that, I hope you like it.


End file.
